Vendors of computing and network equipment have been faced with challenges in controlling and handling the usage of devices (i.e. hardware or/and software) in customer environments. While software licensing has been typically used to address these challenges, it is difficult to monitor and control the usage of same software more than the allowed number of instances or set of features or time duration, or the integrity of the legitimate users.
Software licensing faces problems to implement and enforce. Additionally, as network functions become more virtualized (e.g. selling only network device software), it becomes more important to streamline the software licensing.